A young woman in a blue dress staggers onto the stage. Her black curls hang like a curtain over her face as she hunches over, hands tucked against her stomach. A man in uniform runs in from the opposite end of the stage and catches the woman just as she loses strength and falls. As the black curtain of her hair parts, bloody stumps of flesh appear where hands should be. Upon closer inspection, the red pattern along the edges of her skirt and sleeves turns into fresh blood stains from her mutilation. Her eyes are wide and haunted, trying to convey an unspoken message.
“Why dost not speak to me?” asks the man.
In a final attempt to communicate she opens her mouth and blood pours from her lips in an agonizing groan. The crimson liquid spills down her chin onto her dress, spattering the stage. The man holding her looks on in horror.
This is Titus Andronicus.
“It’s incredibly gory and bloody and Titus is definitely Shakespeare’s bloodiest play” says Miriam Jacobson, a UGA English professor
The University of Georgia recently opened their performance of Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus on Thursday, April 6. The play follows the story of the Roman general, Titus, and his revenge against Tamara, the queen of the Goths. The story line, like any Shakespearean work is complex and can hardly be summarized in one sentence. The complex plot is coupled with eloquent Shakespearean language, which can be difficult to understand by an untrained ear. Together, these two factors deter many people from buying a ticket to Shakespearean plays. The added stereotype that Shakespeare is stuffy high art, does nothing to aid this predicament.
So, what’s the appeal? Why are theatres and companies dedicated to performing Shakespeare’s work? What makes Shakespeare so relevant that audience members continue to fill the seats of plays like Titus Andronicus? According to Sujata Iyengar, a UGA professor that has dedicated her studies to English Renaissance Theatre, its Shakespeare’s craftsmanship that makes Shakespeare so popular.
“It’s always been done before. If you’re looking for a single author to stand for the tradition of humanities, scholarships, and the arts you’re going to pick Shakespeare. The language is very rich and unusual. Shakespeare coins a lot of new phrases and uses words in new ways…These are well crafted plays. They have sensational violence and they’re also clever.”
VIOLENCE
“These violent delights have violent ends. And in their triumph die, like fire and powder.”
-William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet
Sensational violence is one way to describe Titus Andronicus, which features many graphic scenes of murder, rape and assault. Audience members witness water boarding, the severing of hands and brutal stabbings. One could even argue that the violence is what makes the plot of the play the most appealing.
“A young audience will recognize the kind of violence being used,” says Ray Paolino, the director of Titus Andronicus. “[People] want to see the bad people get it in the end.” Paolino compares the violence to popular television shows like Game of Thrones and popular movies like The Hunger Games and Django. The use of the violence is so excessive that it borders on farce. Paolino likens the amount and effect of violence in Titus Andronicus to the violence seen in Quentin Tarantino films.
“I see parallels in this particular play and the way we’re approaching it with some of the violence we’ve seen in movies from Quentin Tarantino, where the violence is so graphic – well it’s graphic and also gleeful, and in many ways funny. We’re laughing.”
The appeal of such savagery makes Titus Andronicus familiar and even funny to college students who get the same daily dosage of shocking content through television and social media. Why so much violence? What purpose could Shakespeare have for using such sensationalized violence?
“When you watch it, are you a voyeur of violence or are you someone trying to make sense of what happens when violence explodes or what happens when a war ends?”, asks Fran Teague, a theatre and English professor at UGA who is a member of the Shakespeare Association of America. For Teague, Shakespeare’s use of violence is entertaining, yet craftily educational.
“We don’t usually get our violence or action with great poetry. For those who don’t care for the poetry, they have the violence.”
For Maggie Colvin, an undergrad theatre major who saw the show, the violence was entertaining. “It was done very theatrically,” says Colvin. “Personally, I think that Titus Andronicus is a Shakespearean version of a horror story. It’s meant to shock the audience.”
THE DESIGN
“So may the outward shows be least themselves, the world is still deceived with ornament.”
-William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice
For those who don’t care for the language or the violence, there is also the design of Titus Andronicus to drawn them in. The play veers from the traditional Elizabethan approach to Shakespeare. The tight bodices, breeches, ruffs and cloaks are replaced with sheer skirts, rugged armor and militaristic uniforms. Rachel Moore, the costume designer, describes the design of the production as “timeless” and “other-worldly”.
“It’s this fictitious place that people can still relate to,” says Moore. “From my research, I pulled a lot of turn of the century, 1900s kinds of silhouettes and incorporated today’s world into it.”
The costumes are indeed fictional in nature.
“They have a feeling of other. They’re these arid…sand creatures”
“[The director] wanted to have a military feel without a connection to our military or any military we recognize.”
The set of Titus Andronicus follows the same modern, yet timeless, image. A raw platform juts into the audience, meshing the world of Shakespeare with reality. The angular runway connects to a huge circular platform that sits stage right. In the back stands a tall wooden structure that disappears into the theatre’s grid structure. The entire set is raw unfinished wood without set dressing. The end feeling is unfinished.
“You always have to structure the set, in dealing with Shakespeare, to facilitate many different locations…I try not to bog down Shakespeare with scene shifts because there’s a lot of scenes in Shakespeare, and it can add time to the show and slow down the pace,” says Julie Ray, the set designer for Titus Andronicus. This proves very true as there are no set pieces, save a dinner table used in the final scene.
When first entering the Fine Arts Theatre, the set is nothing short of impressive in its size. The massive structure even has wire extensions to support the heavy platform extended past the apron of the stage. The industrial look is tough.
“I had to design a set that was as strong as the characters.”
The UGA production of Titus Andronicus seeks to bridge the gap between classical Shakespeare and modern audiences and to show that Shakespeare is accessible and relevant to the world they live in. This is attempted through the design of the show, but the messages within Titus Andronicus and Shakespeare’s other works already seem to do this.
David Saltz, the head of the theatre department, has encouraged the performance of at least one Shakespeare or classical play per season. “It’s fascinating to see the issues in the past that we think are completely new, to see that people are still grappling with them. Shakespeare is remarkable in that way.”
POLITICS
“Th’ abuse of greatness is when it disjoins. Remorse from power.”
– William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
Titus Andronicus is a Shakespearean play and a political statement. The two warring sides, the Romans and the Goths, are pitted against one another in a violent fight for domination. The characters have monologues that parallel with speeches that political candidates make. The characters are also powerful, sly, clever and manipulative, traits that are negatively associated with the world of politics.
“It’s really cool that we’re doing this play with everything that’s going on politically because we can see how Trump would relate to this play, and how someone like Obama would relate to this play,” says Marlon Burnley, a MFA actor who plays Aaron the Moor. “You will see those central figures in there, and I think it’s really cool because it kind of gives us a warning of what to look out for once people get power. They will go crazy with that power and it can go anywhere from there.”
Although today’s politics don’t quite involve beheadings or meat pies made from the bodies of the opponents (both of which happen in Titus Andronicus), the ideas are similar. American political parties, like the Goths and Romans, fight one another on behalf of their communities. Powerful figures appear on both sides of the argument and debates can get heated.
John Terry, the MFA actor playing the lead role of Titus, also feels that there is an underlying political message that audience members will relate to. “It’s these two powerful authority figures, even if you consider them Republican and Democratic, using the people to forward to their own objectives, their own desires.”
“It’s relevant,” says Burnley. “We, as human beings, are always going to have these problems. We think these problems are just in the now, but they’ve been going on for years and years, centuries. The fact that we still have them just shows that we, as a human race are not paying attention.”
REVENGE
“Vengeance is in my heart, death in my hand, blood and revenge are hammering in my head.”
– William Shakespeare, Titus Andronicus
“It’s all about revenge,” claims Charlie Cromer, the graduate student playing Saturninus. “One of the first things that happens is that Titus sacrifices one of the three remaining children of the leader of the army he has just conquered in front of her…That’s what sets everything off.”
Indeed, Titus Andronicus, is full of revengeful acts between the Goths and the Romans. Titus Andronicus kills Tamara’s child, so Tamara, the Queen of the Goths, kills Titus’s children and mutilates his daughter. Titus retaliates and proceeds to bake Tamara’s remaining sons into a pie. Titus is then killed by Bassianus. The revengeful deeds carried out drive the show forward, but when should mercy be given? The play asks this of the audience when each treacherous behavior only results in more death and grief. Unfortunately for the characters in Titus Andronicus, mercy is the road less traveled.
“By not taking the merciful route, he seals his own fate.”
RAPE
“But no perfection is so absolute that some impurity doth not pollute.”
-William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece
“It’s a play about rape,” says Miriam Jacobson, who has taught Titus Andronicus in her classes. “There can’t be anything more relevant on a college campus today…. I’ve noticed that students really felt this need to talk about rape culture”.
It’s not hard to see why students would find the rape in Titus Andronicus relevant. In 2016, the UGA Police Department received 97 rape reports. The reports are an indicator that rape culture is an issue on campus.
Lavinia, the daughter of Titus, is the victim of brutal sexual assault. She is raped, behanded and has her tongue cut out by Chiron and Demetrius, the sons of Tamara, the Queen of the Goths.
Brittany Harris, a second-year MFA actor, plays the role of Lavinia. “Rape is represented as the ultimate weapon. It’s the one thing that, for a woman, makes her useless.” The loss of Lavinia’s virtue taints her in the eyes of the other characters. Without her virtue, she is unable to wed and, in short, she is damaged.
Although the play causes the audience to reflect on rape and its culture, Harris doesn’t feel that it carries the right message.
“I hate to say it, but I don’t feel like it’s a positive message about rape culture and rape.” The idea of revenge, which appears in almost every moment in Titus Andronicus encourages retaliation. For Harris, this is wrong.
“I think for rape culture, having that mindset of revenge is never right.”
…
Ultimately, it will be up to the audience to decide what message they get. Whether that message is about rape, politics or revenge, Shakespeare is and will continues to be a staple in the diet of the theatre world. Why?
The secret appeal to Shakespeare isn’t quite so secret. The work has stood the test of time, because of the meaning we put into the work.
“It’s his ambiguity. He leaves room for people to find themselves,” states Teague.
The characters, language, setting etc. is far from modern, but the ambiguity of the plot allows us to do what we love best. That is, to apply it to ourselves and how we are affected. The UGA Theatre Department will put on a unique production of Titus Andronicus, but nothing can change the messages in the show.
Teague gives some advice for people new to the world of Shakespeare.
“Relax. Don’t be afraid….don’t be afraid to laugh and don’t be afraid to cry.”